Ryan Reynolds: Friend of 25 Years Selling Baby Photo Was “Like a Death”

In his October GQcover story, Ryan Reynolds told writer Zach Baron that someone he has known since childhood—“someone I grew up with”—tried to sell baby photos he and wife Blake Lively shared of their newborn daughter, James. It was “somebody I’ve known, who’s been one of my closest friends, for twenty-five years,” Reynolds said, adding that the betrayal “was like a death. It was one of those devastating things to find out.”

The photo, which Reynolds described as being of James, Blake, and him together in the delivery room on the day she was born, was shopped around “for the money,” after years of the anonymous friend “asking for a check.” Added Reynolds, “I don’t think he thought he would ever be caught. But it’s a pretty narrow group of people that I would send photos like that to. They’re just, like, my closest family and my closest friends.”